In your new book you extol the virtues of frugal innovation. What is it?

Frugal innovation means creating better outcomes for people with fewer resources. It’s not quite the same as doing low-cost or cheap innovation – you also need to make sure that the products and services generated aren’t creating more demand and leading to the consumption of more resources.

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Much of innovation has tended to go the other way – it requires a lot of resources to go into it and, because we like the results so much, we demand more. We end up consuming multiple related things that we didn’t realise we needed, like iPads, MacBooks and iPhones.

In a sense, frugal innovations leave the resource equation in a better state, because they are more efficient in the way that they use resources.

Where does the idea of frugal innovation come from?

The idea has various roots. One is the jugaad innovation of India, which is a sort of improvisational, self-help type of innovation. Think of reusing old yogurt tubs as plant pots, for example. There’s a version of that in Latin America, too, which involves “making do”.

Now the idea is being fed by ambitious people with bold ideas who find themselves facing testing constraints and a lack of resources. Often what results from that is striking and radical innovation.

How can constraints and a lack of resources encourage innovation?

Broadly speaking, there are two ways that people think about encouraging innovation and creativity. First is the idea that innovation comes from a special kind of freedom – that we should set innovators free from bureaucratic constraints, and create special spaces where they can do blue-sky thinking.

But there’s an equally strong idea that innovation comes when you face testing constraints. When you meet people who have very high ambitions but very limited resources, you find their only option is to think radically and collaborate in new ways. They often don’t invent technologies, they reuse them, but in different ways to meet their needs. And then out of that mix comes new ways to do things.

Why is reinventing better than inventing?

If you’re trying to create something that really works, then using something that’s had all the technical glitches debugged is a better bet than trying something new with lots of uncertainty still left in it. It’s better to piggyback on the learning that other people have done, rather than waste your precious resources on an experimental approach.

These innovations are more likely to spread, too, because well-tested and familiar technologies are easier and quicker for people to pick up.

Can you give an example of a frugal innovation born from constrained circumstances?

In Mexico, public healthcare providers are thinly spread and hard for many people to access. Private healthcare is often the best option, and many Mexicans pay for treatments out of their own pockets.

Pedro Yrigoyen was running call centres in Mexico City when he developed an idea that revolutionised this system. He opened a call centre staffed by medically trained people, supported by diagnostic computer systems used by some of the best hospitals in the world. For &dollar;5 a month, people can call the centre – named Medicall Home – whenever they need to. Sixty-two per cent of issues are resolved over the phone. The team will connect people who need further advice to medical practitioners, enabling the company to earn a referral fee, part of which is passed on to the patient as a discount for treatment.

Yrigoyen has developed an ultra-low-cost primary healthcare system by piggybacking on existing technology, and made a lack of resources work for him.

Why do we need frugal innovation?

Traditional methods of innovation don’t easily or readily connect with real-life issues, such as finding cheap solutions to the widespread problems in developing countries that cause a huge health burden. Shouldn’t we be devoting more of our resources towards meeting the challenge of clean water supply, say, rather than building a smarter, quicker mobile phone? I think there’s a danger that we misallocate some of our resources – and frugal innovation could help to rebalance things.

What kind of person does it take to make a frugal innovator?

Frugal innovators tend to look sideways at technology&colon; “If I borrow that printer from the Indian bus system and put it on this ECG machine, then I don’t need to develop my own printer. It is perfectly effective, and we know that it works.”

I think some of the most exciting and interesting people are going to be young innovators, doctors and scientists who come from the developing world, are trained and educated part of the time in universities and institutions in the US and Europe and then go back. And it’s when they go back that they will start generating entirely new types of solutions.

What are the biggest challenges that frugal innovators should tackle?

I would say access to clean water is probably the biggest problem. It is the thing that is most taken for granted in the West. Food and energy are other challenges – there just isn’t enough to go around, especially as populations soar.

There are still enormous numbers of people who don’t have decent homes and access to good education. So as well as there being this tidal wave of aspiration and growth, there are a lot of unmet needs around the world for basic things.

How can science graduates in the UK help solve these problems?

Science graduates are a really important source of innovation. We are seeing a new generation of socially responsible designers, social entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists who are excited by that sense of challenge and responsibility, and want to put their knowledge to work in that kind of way.

The mindset is&colon; “I’ve got all this knowledge, I’m pretty comfortably off, I’ve got a great degree, I’m going to go and work in a place where I can make a difference.”

If you’re a scientist and you have met people in the course of your studies who come from China, India, Africa or Latin America, those could be some of the most important relationships that you make. And your knowledge – if applied to the big challenges of water, energy, food and health – could make a huge difference.

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Charlie Leadbeater is an independent advisor on innovation and a fellow of innovation charity NESTA. His latest book, The Frugal Innovator&colon; Creating change on a shoestring budget, was published in March by Palgrave Macmillan

This article appeared in print under the headline “Innovation on a shoestring”